Vietnam Travel Diary (1): Thoughts on a 30-hour Bus Ride

I love bus rides. Really, I do.

But a 30-hour bus ride from Thailand through Laos going to Vietnam---that’s a different story. It made me wish to just sleep through the entire trip and just wake up finally, in Vietnam. But that’s not the case. The crammed bus seat and the occasional bumpy roads that we passed on made sleep almost impossible. And, I need my 8-hour uninterrupted sleep for my brain to function normally. Without that sleep, all you get from me are the occasional nods and halfhearted replies that my disoriented brain can muster.

This whole trip, though it made me occasionally cranky and irritable due to exhaustion, made me realize a lot of things and one of it is the importance of comfort while travelling. This trip was a teachers’ trip of our school, so everything was basically free. And so, another thing which I realized was that an arranged group tour by a travel agency is okay, but I’m definitely not going to be a big fan of it in my future travels. I am still pro-independent travel and backpacking.

I believe a foreign city or country becomes more personal to you when you are involved in the planning of the whole trip and without really having any fixed or rigid schedule for the entire trip. The charm of independent travel is in interacting with the locals, and being really out in the streets of a city and getting lost and finding your way through it. Although this Vietnam trip was already pre-planned and pre-arranged, but we also somehow made sure that there was something to remember about it.

"What I find weird is a night sky without any stars. I think stars give us this certain sense of being connected, most especially to people whom we can only share but the wide expanse of the night sky with."---bus ride, sometime between the 13th and 14th of October

LAOS ROADTRIP

Laos is a relatively small, landlocked country and its population is living below the international poverty line. Travelling opens your eyes not only to the wonders that this world can offer but also to its realities. Passing through Laos was a very humbling experience. The moment we passed through the national highway of Laos which connects Thailand and Vietnam, I was reminded of the dusty roads of the far-flung barrios in the Philippines.

Honestly, I did complain a bit. Okay, I did complain about the bumpy ride along the country’s national highway---but that was the exhaustion and the ball of emotions that I had become because of the length of the trip. But what I really appreciated was that, despite the state of this country’s economy, the Laos tour guides were very proud in talking about their country for the whole duration of the trip. I think taking pride in one’s country despite of, is something that we have to learn from the Laotian.


STORMY VIETNAM

"Travelling is always humbling because it makes you realize that there are certain things that you can hardly control---your emotions on a dragging bus ride and most especially, the weather."

I woke up to the lashing of the winds and rain on our hotel room window. When I drew the curtains aside, we were greeted with a tropical stormy Vietnamese morning.

I’m sorry but despite the lashing of the tropical storm which actually destroyed a lot of homes and establishments in Vietnam, at that moment, I smiled nostalgically upon remembrance of stormy mornings way back home. So, we waited for several hours inside the hotel for the storm to calm down before doing our travel itinerary. In the midst of waiting, we were astounded with the heartbreaking earthquake news from the Philippines. A couple of our colleagues who are from Cebu and Bohol had difficulty contacting their families, and although the Filipino spirit of resilience and faith surfaced among us during that moment, but the agony of waiting for any news from home made us contemplative all throughout that first day.

The scenes along the roads of Vietnam were no foreign to us Filipinos. They were like images from home during a calamity and after that, when we are picking ourselves up right after the storm. We even waved back to and shared some kind smiles with some young Vietnamese soldiers who were doing some clean-up and relief operations along the shores of Danang, one of the cities badly hit by the storm. 

The scenes of the Vietnamese people, picking pieces of their homes and businesses, or whatever were left of it to rebuild it again, were truly heartbreaking. But it also inspired admiration for the fortitude that they were showing. Because of that, I was a little bit pacified in knowing that since the spirit of fortitude and resilience is universal, the Filipinos way back home can definitely rise back again right after the striking of the earthquake---for we are one of the strongest people that I know of.

Vietnam, right after the tropical storm.

"If there is anything else that I would remember about this trip aside from having had a week-long love affair with my bus seat is that, I was able to have a glimpse of the Filipino spirit in the Vietnamese people while they were picking themselves up, right after the lashing of the tropical storm---which reminded me that the spirit of human fortitude and strength is indeed universal. Plus, the gift of knowing that on the other side of the long stretch of sea before us was actually home."